When you write your argument “in favor of religion”, consider potential objections that this forum is likely to offer, steelman them, then counter them the best you can, using the language of the forum, then repeat. Basically, try to minimize the odds of a valid (from the forum’s point of view) objection not being already addressed in your post. You are not likely to succeed completely, unless you are smarter than the collective intelligence of LW (not even Eliezer is that smart). But it goes a long way toward presenting a good case. The mindset should be “how would DSimoon/Desrtopa/TheOtherDave/… likely reply after reading what I write?”. Now, this is very hard, much harder than what most people here usually do, which is to present their idea and let others critique it. But if you can do that, you are well on your way to doing the impossible, which is basically what you have to do to convince people here that your arguments in favor of theism have merit.
EDIT: When you think you are done, read Common Sense Atheism for Christians and see if you did your best to address every argument there to the author’s (not your) satisfaction and clearly state the basis for the disagreement where you think no agreement is possible. Asking someone here for a feedback on your draft might also be a good idea.
When you write your argument “in favor of religion”, consider potential objections that this forum is likely to offer, steelman them, then counter them the best you can, using the language of the forum, then repeat. Basically, try to minimize the odds of a valid (from the forum’s point of view) objection not being already addressed in your post. You are not likely to succeed completely, unless you are smarter than the collective intelligence of LW (not even Eliezer is that smart). But it goes a long way toward presenting a good case. The mindset should be “how would DSimoon/Desrtopa/TheOtherDave/… likely reply after reading what I write?”. Now, this is very hard, much harder than what most people here usually do, which is to present their idea and let others critique it. But if you can do that, you are well on your way to doing the impossible, which is basically what you have to do to convince people here that your arguments in favor of theism have merit.
EDIT: When you think you are done, read Common Sense Atheism for Christians and see if you did your best to address every argument there to the author’s (not your) satisfaction and clearly state the basis for the disagreement where you think no agreement is possible. Asking someone here for a feedback on your draft might also be a good idea.
This terminology would probably be obscure to a newcomer. For ibidem (and any confused others), here’s the explanation, on the Less Wrong wiki.